Gnashing Fang Combo, one button?

[SaberMaxwell]

Shouldn't they be looking at the foundation of the game's combat anyways, rather than just neglecting its increasing shallowness in favor of complacency or asking players just to be likewise complacent and greedily swallow button bloat for its mere illusion of depth?

I don't know. Should they? The trend SE is looking at right now is how average subs are going through the roof with each expansion. They're seeing massive success and clearly customer churn remains within acceptable values. The risk of shaking that foundation might be greater than the reward, which is probably the answer to why a lot of requested QoL are ignored or put on the near permanent "please look forward to it" list.

I'm not much of a fan either, but I've seen it suggested and can believe that while this game is a cash cow for SE, its history has the execs and the devs scared to take any big chances for better or for worse.

[Shurrikhan]

That's an overhaul to the entire combat system, balance would need to be considered now that every job has 3 to 8 new actions, each functionally distinct from one another to avoid perceived bloat.

That's only if you increase the total number of abilities to fill the now-conserved slots (beyond what we do... every... single... expansion). We've yet to make any such suggestion here, even if it will of course occur with further expansions (hopefully now without costing us our old skills or our entertainment over the course of leveling) only indicated the current inefficiency and the goal of the suggestions.

If it takes up a button, it should represent a separate decision or separately tracked cooldown. If it does neither, it does not deserve to be forced upon us as a separate button.

The problem with expecting that from SE is you have people who like the foundation of this game's combat as-is. In the worst case, them overhauling combat in such a way would make it significantly worse too. In the best case you'll still have people pining for the old combat system and having no way to enjoy it anymore because the foundational changes needed couldn't really be optional.

Again, though, that's not what's being suggested here. I might prefer that, personally, but all that's been suggested is using fewer unnecessary buttons to do the exact same thing. Not one ability would be changed. Heck, the change, unless one read the patch notes and, say, never took the extra skills off their hotbar to activate their coupling/auto-shifting, could go completely unnoticed except to those who want to save button-space in this way.

[Reynhart]

That's an overhaul to the entire combat system, balance would need to be considered now that every job has 3 to 8 new actions, each functionally distinct from one another to avoid perceived bloat.

It's the exact same overhaul you need when a new expansion come out and with its new skills. And until that, you could still have skills with the exact same effect, but simply with different animation, just to make the combat flow less repeating.

The problem with expecting that from SE is you have people who like the foundation of this game's combat as-is. In the worst case, them overhauling combat in such a way would make it significantly worse too.

The combat system would be exactly the same (Except for MNK during perfect balance).
If you're a DRG, your GCD rotation should be : True Thrust - Disembowel - Chaos Thrust - Wheeling Thrust - Fang and Claw - Raiden Thrust - Vorpal Thrust - Full Thrust - Fang And Claw - Wheeling Thrust.
Wether this rotation is 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-5-4 or 1-1-1-2-3-4-4-4-3-2 or 1-1-1-1-2-2-2-2-2-1 is irrelevant.

[Quor]

If it takes up a button, it should represent a separate decision or separately tracked cooldown. If it does neither, it does not deserve to be forced upon us as a separate button.

The basis of having things on a separate button is to differentiate between people who have the ability to hit the appropriate button at the appropriate time and those that don't. It also gives people a goal to attain, another challenge to overcome as they constantly drive for that "perfect" execution. If you remove the fail state from video games, then you remove the fun from video games. A huge part of the satisfaction from a job comes in performing it correctly, hitting stuff at the right times, both cooldowns and your combo. If I clip my GCD's on E3S then I end up missing Solid Barrel on my GNB right before the first Maelstrom, but if I do it right I'm able to sneak that last Solid Barrel in and come out with a cartridge primed and ready to go into Renzokuken as soon as Levi gets back.

It's a simple thing, but it's a good thing. Nailing my GCD's and oGCD's just right gives me a satisfaction that I wouldn't get otherwise, and having the implied fail-state of dropping my combo means I feel a sense of accomplishment by performing correctly. Having a one-button-does-all approach removes (or drastically increases the margin for error of) the fail-state. If you can't lose in a video game, both on a micro level and a macro level, then the game ceases to be fun as there is no longer a sense of having "earned" a victory.

[Shurrikhan]

The basis of having things on a separate button is to differentiate between people who have the ability to hit the appropriate button at the appropriate time and those that don't. It also gives people a goal to attain, another challenge to overcome as they constantly drive for that "perfect" execution. If you remove the fail state from video games, then you remove the fun from video games. A huge part of the satisfaction from a job comes in performing it correctly, hitting stuff at the right times, both cooldowns and your combo. If I clip my GCD's on E3S then I end up missing Solid Barrel on my GNB right before the first Maelstrom, but if I do it right I'm able to sneak that last Solid Barrel in and come out with a cartridge primed and ready to go into Renzokuken as soon as Levi gets back.

It's a simple thing, but it's a good thing. Nailing my GCD's and oGCD's just right gives me a satisfaction that I wouldn't get otherwise, and having the implied fail-state of dropping my combo means I feel a sense of accomplishment by performing correctly. Having a one-button-does-all approach removes (or drastically increases the margin for error of) the fail-state. If you can't lose in a video game, both on a micro level and a macro level, then the game ceases to be fun as there is no longer a sense of having "earned" a victory.

And how long has it been since you hit the wrong button in a combo by mistake? A year? Three years? Let's leave out events that are less about your personal difficulty than whether your cat decided to jump on your desk.

And how long did it take you since adding a button to your rotation to make no mistakes in regard to pressing the newly extended combo correctly every time? At most an hour? And maybe five minutes more the next time you played?

Those fail checks are absolutely inconsequential to anyone beyond the bottom 25%, if not the bottom 10, and if the ability to accidentally hit one button over is all that separates you from them (1) you can still hit the wrong button just as easily as before, just on a more distinct ability, and (2) you probably shouldn't consider yourself an authority on difficulty.

Again, I probably wouldn't use the consolidation myself except on a few skills, because it's honestly easier to have my fingers trace out the timing for me. I know precisely when my Higanbana is going to need to be refreshed not because of the target debuffs but because my fingers have made n laps around my combos. But, I'm not going to insist that others don't even have the option of saving some button-space just so I can continue making the game easier for myself in that fashion.

There is literally only two fears here worth considering: that there will eventually be no space for the difficulty-free yet nonetheless enjoyable "rhythm of keys", having taken up its space instead with too many varied tactical tools, and that those new means of skill-gap may make the game too hard for a number of players (at least unless coupled with in-game support such as better ways of teaching how to actually play well). If the prior is your position, I understand it, but do not try to convince me that the system as it stands protects difficulty or skill-gap. It doesn't. It quite frankly makes the experience easier for anyone who's spent any time on their jobs.

[Reynhart]

It's a simple thing, but it's a good thing. Nailing my GCD's and oGCD's just right gives me a satisfaction that I wouldn't get otherwise

I'm pretty sure you would get more satisfaction if you manage to juggle between more skills than you have now thanks to the new free slots.

[Shurrikhan]

I'm pretty sure you would get more satisfaction if you manage to juggle between more skills than you have now thanks to the new free slots.

Or, if favoring the "whatever I have now is better than anything I could ever get and should be protected at all costs" conservative take -- perhaps it would give you more satisfaction to have access to the same abilities you enjoyed before, rather than losing some tenth of them with each further expansion, than hitting the exact same buttons to activate what would then be fewer of those abilities?

You don't get both. The devs are quite fixed on the idea that there is, or at least should be, some rough cap to the number of keys we can use. They also feel obliged to give us X number of new skills per expansion, even if those new skills are not particularly attractive individually. So, which are you going to drop for those new skills, no matter how lackluster they may be by comparison? Abilities? Or bloat buttons?

[Quor]

And how long has it been since you hit the wrong button in a combo by mistake? A year? Three years? Let's leave out events that are less about your personal difficulty than whether your cat decided to jump on your desk.

Three days ago, during Black Smokers.

There is literally only two fears here worth considering: that there will eventually be no space for the difficulty-free yet nonetheless enjoyable "rhythm of keys", having taken up its space instead with too many varied tactical tools, and that those new means of skill-gap may make the game too hard for a number of players (at least unless coupled with in-game support such as better ways of teaching how to actually play well). If the prior is your position, I understand it, but do not try to convince me that the system as it stands protects difficulty or skill-gap. It doesn't. It quite frankly makes the experience easier for anyone who's spent any time on their jobs.

Of course it preserves difficulty. If Renzokuken becomes a single button you have halved the number of unique inputs necessary to correctly perform it. It would be akin to taking NIN Mudra's and instead of splitting them into Ten/Chi/Jin and Mudra buttons, you just have "Hyoton" or "Suiton" or "Doton" buttons that execute them for you. Having them as Ten/Chi/Jin both increases the skill necessary to perform them correctly while also cutting down on button bloat (since w/o T/C/J as unique skills to combine, you'd end up with 7 unique buttons to push instead of the 4 we get with T/C/J plus Mudra). But there is a fail-state in T/C/J usage, in that using too many or not enough will result in failure or a different Mudra than the one the NIN wants. Thus, when you pull it off correctly, you feel good because you've overcome a job challenge that now allows access to a powerful skill. Certainly better than if you just pushed a single button on cooldown.

On it's own, the Renzokuken combo isn't much different than any other 1-2-3 combo out there, but taken in the context of other stuff a tank is expected to do, it's fine as it is. Furthermore, even if the combo was consolidated down to a single button, this is another two buttons that may or may not be filled. You certainly can't add more damage to GNB because they're fine where they are now, and while their mitigation and utility may not be the best out of the tanks, it's certainly not lacking. So in other words, this change would do nothing but lower what little skill ceiling currently exists for tanks. Ironic, considering the calls in other threads for more "engagement" and "complexity" to be added for tanks, while this thread is specifically asking for a job to have some complexity shaved off.

Here's where I come from - personally speaking - when talking about many of the "issues" brought up on these forums.

1 - tank balance is the best and tightest it's ever been since ever
2 - any change to any part of a tank will disrupt this balance somewhat
3 - an argument can be made that tanks are not as engaging as they could be (or once were) due in large part to the overarching design of certain tank aspects (emnity being the most obvious) as well as the current state of encounter design
4 - arguing for increased tank engagement/complexity isn't necessarily a bad thing as long as:
5 - it respects the fact that balance between the tanks is rock solid as it stands now

Hence, any suggestion I see gets filtered through these criteria. I find it hard to square the circle of people complaining about a lack of tank complexity also advocating for a tank to be made less complex. Yes, there are accompanying suggestions of how skill consolidation will allow for "other" stuff to be added, but this - in the case of GNB especially - runs the risk of taking that delicate balance we have achieved and throwing it out the window. You can't add more damage to GNB without making it clearly stronger than the other tanks, and you can't add more utility/mitigation to GNB without making it clearly strong than the other tanks. Thus, consolidation of skills does nothing but lower the complexity of playing GNB for no other reason than to make it less complex. There is nothing that could be added in to replace said complexity to keep GNB at the same level, or improve it, because to do so would throw tank balance out of whack.

Of course, you could add stuff to the other tanks, but now we're no longer talking about "consolidating" a single combo on one tank and instead have opened up the entire can of worms that is intra-role balance. This is made doubly complicated by the fact that development resources are finite. We can all agree that GNB is in a pretty great spot right now. DRK and WAR are in far more (relative) need of help than GNB or PLD. Not to say GNB and PLD are perfect, but with the points above in mind, it would be better to focus energy where needed.

[shao32]

you don't need a excesive amount of skills to archive complexity, beside is counterproductive since Devs politics has been doing exactly the contrary by promoting simplicity each expansion, increase the number of skill by promoting a spaming nature on all jobs it's not good, not everyone like spam the same buttom several seconds in a row, this is not a game where the GCD is fast and make consolidation not so tedious, we are talking about 6-10s of spaming the same button with the casual oGCD we are already use and we can't have a excesive amount of oGCD bcs we have to use our devensive skills without cliping if all of you forgeth, are you anyone think about that? or consider that won't be apreciated for some?.

at the end of the day make space for more skills by that way will have a limit, you can't just add more and more, it will be a time they have to start removing and sustitute skills for new ones again, the dev team has show they can archive really nice complexity with a few buttoms with the current combo system, god we have DRK on heavensward remember?.
we have further useles skills like the stuns and the silences that are barely used and are very situational, we have the new anti knocback that practically invalidate the charge changes of this expansion on literaly 99% of the content, we have to much defensive skills, we can even remove the invul since how abusive are and how trivialice the few combat mechanics we have to manage, heck with the buff of provoke they could buff it even more and remove shirk, thats a lot of space.

[Reynhart]

It would be akin to taking NIN Mudra's and instead of splitting them into Ten/Chi/Jin and Mudra buttons, you just have "Hyoton" or "Suiton" or "Doton" buttons that execute them for you.

It's completely different. The skill in using Mudras is weaving them into your rotation, so you had to think and act fast. Finishing your combo don't require any decision making and is not fast. The skill in performing rotation is keeping uptime and knowing what to weave between them.

I find it hard to square the circle of people complaining about a lack of tank complexity also advocating for a tank to be made less complex.

We're not. Imagine I save two slots as a DRK by consolidating SoulEater into one combo. Now, I can have a Power Slash combo on one of those slot, let's say, to apply a speed buff, and bring back Scourge on the other slot. Now, I have two more things to maintain in my rotation, making DRK more complex.